“We are fighting a last-ditch battle to save our wild salmon. We need to go hard.”

The new Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage won repeated rounds of applause from symposium delegates when she promised to improve water quality, boost DOC funding and restore democracy to ECAN.

In one of her first addresses in her new role, Ms Sage was critical of what she described as the previous government’s inaction on water quality.

“That is going to change. We need to restore flows in our rivers,” she said.

North American salmon expert David Willis says climate change has caused falls in salmon populations across the Pacific.

Mr Willis, who works for Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, says action to halt that decline needs to start now.

Salmon fishing at the Raikaia River mouth.

And he warned that anglers will have to make sacrifices if salmon numbers are to recover.

New Zealand experts told delegates water quality, sedimentation, irrigation and lack of fencing around spawning streams are all having an impact on local salmon numbers.

Symposium organisers Matthew Hall and Trevor Isitt say the symposium was a success and provided an action plan. The first step will be establishing a Salmon Action Committee to co-ordinate the recovery strategy.

Both men are determined to halt the decline in wild salmon numbers.

“I am a fourth generation salmon angler and I do not want to lose this magnificent fish. As far as the battle to save them is concerned, I’m only just starting,” Matthew Hall says.